The USS Skipjack moored to the Dumaine Street Wharf in New Orleans, LA., late summer 1938. She made a three day visit there as she was rounding up her post-commissioning shake down trials along the US East Coast and Caribbean. She ranged as far south as the Canal Zone before making port calls at New Orleans, Panama City, Florida, Newport, RI and Provincetown, Mass. She also visited Halifax, Nova Scotia before dry docking at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, ME. for a post-shakedown yard period.

The visitors are boarding the submarine via a narrow and somewhat dangerous gangplank that stretches from the dock to the top of the bridge fairwater. From there they made their way down into the submarine and on to the deck. There is a group clustered around the forward rescue buoy housing on the port side, perhaps for a demonstration of the telephone that is inside the buoy, used to communicate with the crew if the submarine were to sink. Another group is clustered around the deck opening for the main companionway on the starboard side of the torpedo room hatch. This companionway led down into the superstructure, giving access to the torpedo room escape trunk through a watertight door in the side of the trunk. From there they would have access to the interior of the boat.